A Cliché Romance

"There's no one here and it seems weird in the dark, not gonna lie."

Lily speaks to herself as she opens the door to enter to the room left with the will of vacancy and silence, the sole participants in the fate of solidarity to that room are the inanimate furniture, the board, duster, pieces of chalks on the board, the chalk powder on floor that got detached from it's better half on the board and fell to its cruel fate, personifying a tragedy from the columns of Shakespeare.

"This place seems hauntingly beautiful at night doesn't it?"

A sudden not very high, but still loud voice from behind broke her thread of immersion, with a sword of shock and bewilderment, catching her breath again, after a shriek, she looked back to hit him with an elbow and say,

"Noah!! You almost startled me!!"

"Well if we are talking about being startled, I should be the one being scared, because I don't really think it's normal seeing people binge-watching empty classrooms."

He replied with sarcasm as his usual self, and she said,

"Oh yeah yeah right!! Let's see, what's normal for you, hmm? TO WRITE THE MOST BIZZARE, FREAKISH AND IRKSOME DARES ON THE CHITS FOR TRUTH OR DARE GAME AND GET STUCKED HERE AT NIGHT, WHILE DRAGGING ME IN AS WELL?"

She spoke in utter resentment, her voice escalating at each word, while the look in her eyes getting more and more ferocious as she stares at him in nothing but blazing fury.

"Sheesh!!! Calm down girl!! Or you might gonna end up scaring even the ghosts this place is rumored to have."

He tried soothing her temperament but...

"If there were any ghosts here, I'm damn sure they'd be pitying me for having you with me. You are so horribly annoyingly uncivilized that if we placed the 'rumored ghosts' of this place and you in the same house, the spirit would call an exorcist to get rid of either you, or get exorcised themselves."

And the room went silent. She walked away from him, stomping, not too loud. While he bowed his head a bit, not crying but visibly hurt, introspecting his nature and the troublemaker he often is.

Sitting on the last bench, looking at the wallpaper of lock screen for the following thirty minutes, to seem angry and avoiding him, she still sneakily checked his actions, which basically were being fixated at the front bench close to the first window, and staring, at the moon and ceiling turn after turn.

"I should have not said that to him, maybe. I mean it was a mutual decision to play a game, that's a game after all. Not like we are at a foreign land, the hostel is just a building away. After all it's my own college classroom, he must've felt bad. Should I try to apologize?"

She gave it a thought and went ahead to sit next to him, not uttering anything for a few seconds and then saying,

"Sorry, I was rather too scared and angry to process that you were.. just trying to make me relaxed and calm. I just yelled and said that, sorry again."

"It's fine." He said with a smile.

"Did it hurt?"

"It would have, if it were you, or me, back when we first met. Remember?"

She begins to reminisce as he recalls,

"Seems like yesterday, when it was junior high school and I was a fresher to your institute, often made fun of my weird speaking tone and accent, it felt really alienated, adding to that my quirks, like this dare. Haha, somewhere it was because of me I guess.

Being the odd one out often sucks, but I got you lately, from sitting willingly next to me while everyone else rejected in all manners from calm to cruel, to bearing all my quirks with just a few irritated responses, you're all I could ask for, and maybe more than I deserved.

Thank you in fact, even now, though in anger, you still did come along to complete this dare of staying in the classroom entire night, till 5 A.M., even though you could've simply refused, didn't you?

I believe the people who make you feel at home, the people who show you each day what kindness and love feels like, are worth getting hurt for... and you're one of them."

Lily didn't quite realise, that she got lost looking at Noah's face as he was busy with his monologue, until he snapped his finger and brought her back to senses, she spoke

"Sometimes you still manage to be sensible, your weirdness makes me often forget that you are after all, a writer, the ones who feel more and write, probably even more."

"Naah... we just know how to write what we feel...most folks don't." Noah replied.

"But then..." she continues to ask, "why did you put such dares in the game?"

"Well I just wanted to talk to you for a while, it's been quite some time since we did this, and so, when they called this time, which is the third time this week for this old boring game of "who's your crush" in the name of truth and dare, I gave them this dare idea before game, and chose game deliberately to come here."

"You could've just come to meet me though."

"Yeah but it's like, you're mostly surrounded by people, and it's not about talking, sometimes, being around some people, heals a lot itself."

She looked at him and smiled and they turned their heads against the sheet of moonlight coming in through the window, it was all just beautiful, not because they hadn't seen a moon night before but cause, what you do, becomes better, if you're with the right person.